I was playing mahjongg in a smoky backroom with a bunch of middle aged, balding Cantonese men. The room was smoky from their cigarettes and they all wore the kind of ragged wifebeaters associated with Hong Kong. Each player had large smoothened logs standing up in their corner of the table, inscribed all around with large Chinese characters and were an integral part of the game. When you had particular combinations, you were supposed to look at the stick and make additional bonus chains. I was seeing the room in some sort of dramatically rotating cinematic mode, and it looked like a stereotypical back-room mahjongg den. I remember thinking that I was such a terrible player - that I still needed a cheat sheet for the bonus combinations despite having even learned the characters.

It soon became clear that I was the one recording the game, using a small camcorder hooked up to a VCR in the room, which had turned into a rather staid little living room with an old green rug. I was making the recording for tax purposes. There was some particular amount that I had to bet or something, and would end up being categorized at 0, 20, 40, or 60 percent. This was to determine your tax bracket, and I was making this particular recording for Merry. We want the 40% bracket for some reason, and was really happy when I somehow got it. A large checkbox appeared over the scene, and was subsequently filled by a huge splotch of ketchup.

Now it was my turn, and I wanted the highest bracket. This involved me assembling the jade mahjongg tiles into specific patterns and taking both pictures and video with what was now a big digital camera. The middle aged men were gone and Kai was sitting across the table from me, laughing, joking, and generally being entertaining but unhelpful. I had set up the tiles so that I had some sort of big red bean sitting on top of the middle of three neat stacks of tiles, each looking something like a sofa (we used to make little furniture out of the tiles in real life). Some of the tiles were extra-long and skinny. I was trying to set the pattern up exactly right, so I kept adjusting and taking new pictures. The red bean was supposed to look like it was diving off the tiles, over the edge of the table and onto the floor. Then my sister came in and tried to help by handling the camera while I tried a new setup on a different side of the table. It was rather stressful, but I felt confident at the same time.

posted by Larry at 10:14 AM